from our fathers and mothers
by Aiko Isari
Summary: Someone made a mistake of touching that kitsune's tails. Now, apparently, Koh has to pay for it. Somehow. He's not sure what Sayo has to do with it.
1. 1

1.

Koh wakes up one morning and it absolutely sucks.

It's better by far than the time he had woken up in someone else's house and forgotten why only to be face to face with a psychopathic bear holding tea mugs. Honestly, though, it's not by much.

Instead, he's wide awake, his sheets are covered in blood, and there are fiery feathers poking their way out of his backside.

His sister takes one look at him and says, "Yeah, that's normal."

He briefly considers slugging her in the face.

"Don't worry," Keren says like everything is completely normal. "I did it too. Just, uh, go kiss the person you like and that'll sort it out."

Koh facepalms and a feather drops into his breakfast.

* * *

 ** _A/N:_ **Is this related to Moon? Sort of? It's mostly silly.

Challenges: digiotpweek, minific masterclass 4 (Dawn/Dusk), diversity writing GG D40.


	2. 2

2.

Of course, that was so much easier said than done because a) the person he liked was distinctly not around, and b) the person he liked was _Sayo_ , his rival, friend, and the older sister of his apprentice. And Yuki was protective of her sister in a whole new way now that she herself had, in her words, ruined everything.

And Yuki was his current priority, so he was going to focus on that, rather than the constant twinging in his spine. Good thing too, she couldn't aim worth a damn.

"I'm blind," she sniped at him, attempting to swipe at his knees. He tried not to roll his eyes.

"You're eleven," he corrected. "Still growing, still perpetually stunted by starvation. We have to work with all of those factors."

"I'm still blind," she reminded him.

Koh resisted another urge to punt this girl across the training field. Which he could, Sayo had told him he could. But it felt wrong somehow. "Yes, I know. Litton's blind. You could have worked under her."

"she smells like fur!" Yuki protested.

Koh made a face. "She's a dog."

" _Rude."_

Koh groaned. This girl was going to be the death of him, honestly, even before her sister.


	3. 3

3.

"You could always like someone else."

He was torn between backhanding his sister across the face and letting her eat his feathers but it was so nice to see her in a good mood he wasn't willing to jeopardize it by being an asshole yet.

Yet.

"I could." Koh snorted. "But you weren't clear. Is it the phoenix mating like or the 'let's shag until we pass out' like?"

Because their parents were apparently phoenix people just like Sayo was a dragon person.

Keren turns up her nose. "I don't know. What's the difference?"

"Prude," Koh says without any heat.

"You're supposed to wait." She rolled her eyes at him. "That's what you do, Koh."

About sixteen years too late to hen over me. "Only for you, sis."

"What's that supposed to mean?" She was picking up something to throw, which was abnormal for everyone but her. Even Sayo didn't throw things. At least this was a bread roll.

"That we have differing cultural values and belief systems?" he offered, going back to his food. "Nothing else, Nee-san."

She still hit him with the roll.


	4. 4

4.

Sayo was reading. Slowly, of course, mouthing each syllable with a furrowed brow. It would have been cute before her species' puberty hit her like a truck full of makeup and pheromones. He could ignore those now, but he couldn't ignore that she was cute.

"What are you doing out in public?"

"Reading." She sounded amused, which meant she wasn't offended, which was good enough for him.

"Hadn't guessed. Anything good?" He sat beside her on the squishy chair, making it squish and squirm a little.

"That depends, you want to read some with me?"

"Is water wet?" He settled in beside her, waiting for the inevitable lurch of the body, on his back, in everything he is.

But it didn't, and so he cracked the spine of the book and read about-

"Magic."

Sayo twitched, tail and ears both and lidded eyes glanced up at him again. "Ah. Teaching."

"Yikes."

She smiled bitterly and it was true it should have hurt more than it did. "I know right?"


	5. 5

5.

Reading with Sayo, piledriving Yuki into the floor (no one believed he could since he looked like a weed but all you had to do was get someone's foot and they fell like god damn dominoes), Koh barely had time to register the way his body ran hot until it was over and everything sizzled under his fingers. He's been going shirtless for days. At least in Digital no one cares, or they just got used to it. It was that or ruin all of his shirts.

Sayo didn't seem to care and thank god Yuki was blind. She'd have panicked more than likely, more than she already was every time she 'saw' the magic that was his soul flaring up with each flame.

Koh was going to be honest with himself. He wished Sayo would care more, just a little, beyond the concern you should someone who fought at that same back, beyond the whole, renting out her house thing.

But she didn't seem to, and he would have to go along with it. He hadn't gotten quite as lucky as Keren, who had managed to get the one of her dreams that immediately was like "I love you too" without repercussions. Aside from them being kidnapped for years on end, she'd claimed it was a good deal.

And she said he had terrible priorities.

He could just pretend the wings on fire didn't hurt and he'd be good. Completely fine. Yep.


	6. 6

6.

There was a fox in his bed one morning.

Or well, he guessed that was Sayo. And she was there, reading again. Her eyes looked exhausted from all of it.

Still. Face red, spine quivering, he had to ask. "What the hell, Sayo."

"Keren insisted." She wasn't particularly red in the face herself, just at best, scowling. "She said waiting for you outside would have been more weird.

"Well, you waiting for me at all is weird," He was so glad he could wear a shirt today.

"Don't ruin it." She was smiling still, and it made him want to. Oh god he was so in trouble. "Magic is a painful curriculum."

"Why are you studying their curriculum if you're just going to teach them ours?" He sat down beside her, so determined not to be weird.

"Their curriculum apparently says too many life or death situations means a lawsuit."

Koh blinked. "Oh it's an Earth curriculum." Never seen one based He grinned a bit. "Yeah, they don't like that."

She tilted her head at him. "So what do they like, mister foreigner?"

You, he thought in the stupidest second of his life. You and those little smiles you make when you think no one is looking, the way you refuse to be embarrassed by anything on purpose, the way you think you're selfish and yet work yourself to the god damn bone for this place anyway.

"Koh?" She'd leaned up a little on his bed, not enough to worry but enough. "YOu cool?"

"Peachy," he said distantly.

I'm so screwed.


	7. 7

_Small warning for vomit_

* * *

7.

Koh dreamed of a silver fox dancing at his heels. It leaped around him as he walked a little slowly. Sometimes it was close enough to touch, other times it ventured closer to the trees. He didn't feel like he wanted to pet it, not even that he should. HE just knew it was there and it was close and it regarded him as someone, or something important.

Then the dreaming mind reminded him of where he really was: Resistor Jungle.

And he woke up and threw up.

He noticed, when cleaning it up, there had been no red in it. That was a small mercy.

But now he had ideas, or at least something like one.


	8. 8

8.

So he decided to visit her, for the first time in a while. At least today he had the excuse of taking her home and her insisting he come along. As she did sometimes. Which was strange in its own way.

"The chiefs are making me go to magic school." She said this in a voice of utter distaste. "They're making Nee-san teach."

Koh would have stopped dead if that hadn't just clicked the world into place in the most annoying way for him. "Why? She's sixteen. You're eleven."

"According to Glare," She paused as delicately as she could muster so he could wince. Koh couldn't explain what Glare had done, had just… let happen, would have done, had been waiting for an opportunity to do, after doing all he had to get Koh free from his own life. He couldn't think about it. "It's because of two things: they're desperate for a full staff and time travel shenanigans."

Koh did stop this time. "What the shit."

Yuki shrugged. "It's weird right? But no one else has the free time now, seeing as they've gotta catch up after all those unfilled missions. And I dunno much about the time travel, but considering how this place is floating it seems legit."

"... Uh huh." That put a damper on things.

"Yep." She turned her head back in his direction (which never bothered him like it bothered most of the Night Claw he came across. She'd always been blind to him.) and grinned. "So whatever you've gotta say, Coach, better make it quick."

… "You little shit," he finally managed to say.

She laughed.


	9. 9

9.

Koh didn't end up walking in on her out of the bath. Or soaking wet. Or… anything his stupid bisexual brain could think of from their brief cohabitation together.

… Urgh that sounded creepy.

He did however, find her upside down in her computer chair, tail twitching and ears free of the hat bunched up on the floor. "Yo," she said, not looking up. "You smell like soot."

"I'm apparently a phoenix person, it's better than nothing." He grinned and took a seat on the nearest stool. "Is that working for you?"

Sayo snorted. "Yes, the blood rushing to my brain is fixing my autism."

"...That has nothing to do with understanding the book Sayo."

She rolled her eyes. "How do you know, Mister Genius? Where's your degree?"

"In Engineering." He raised an eyebrow, daring her to go on. "But I get you. It's still not that."

"Don't be an ass."

"Why be one, when I can have one?"

Sayo paused. "... I'm not dignifying that with a response."

"Probably shouldn't."

They settled into silence. Koh swiped a book and started to read. Or pretend read. This one was in god damn Latin. He hated Latin. So he wasn't getting out of this, especially since there was only so long Yuki could wheedle Phascomon to let her play on the DigiFarms - aka steal eggs.

So he took a deep breath and let it out. She noticed but did not react.

"I'm sorry."


	10. 10

10.

"You're sorry?" she repeated, lowering her book. "For what?"

Koh fidgeted in his seat. "For all I said. All I did. I… I know it was ages ago now but it still fucked us both over."

He could close his eyes and see her curled on her front in the jungle, shaking with pain and guilt and everything he had added to her.

"Oh." Her voice was thoughtful. "That." A pause. "Yeah you were an asshole."

He risked peeking at her. "So was I though, to be fair."

"You were bad at being one." You always are.

"Still was one." She shrugged a bit. "I wouldn't let you near my sister if I hadn't forgiven you for it."

Koh nodded slowly, closing the book. That was true.

She sighed and closed her own. She flipped up to face him. (He turned his head away so fast it caused whiplash in his neck.) "Look," Sayo said, purple eyes riveted on his in that uncanny way people had in Night Claw when they really wanted to look away from you. "If you feel that bad, help me start prepping lessons. I'm gonna teach rich kids how to be useful. I'll need the practice dummy."

It took Koh a minute to register that sentence. Then he scowled. "Ha ha. Fine. I'll do it."

She grinned. "That's a good bird."

"I'm older than you," he said, feeling no twinge in his back for the first time in weeks.

"Are you?" She shot back. He laughed.

Maybe being a bird wasn't so bad, if it gave him a chance to be friends with his rival. Or at the very least, not walking on eggshells.

His sister was still wrong. He wasn't going to kiss Sayo for a thousand burning feathers.


End file.
